Is anyone missing their right foot?

...resident Digby Jones, 80, told the New York Times: "The whole thing is a scam, as far as I'm concerned, all part of a big joke. If they go to the mortuaries on the mainland, they'll find some guy laughing his head off."

uh

There are just so many lols in that article:

the trainers would allow the feet to happily pootle for some time

Pootle? WTF?! When severed body parts are being washed up on beaches, the use of the word "pootle" is hardly appropriate...

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a former professor of oceanography at the University of Washington, and an expert in floating objects (he is writing a book called The Floating World for HarperCollins), said: "Left footwear and right footwear often tend to wash up at different times at different places because they float differently
There are beaches that collect mostly rights and other beaches that collect mostly lefts. The winds or the currents sort out left and right footwear

This guy has got to be the floating severed foot equivelent of Dexter.

they'll find some guy laughing his head off

If three people all laugh their heads off, do the heads all wash up on the beach at the same time?

I hope, Orpheus-like, that their heads are still laughing when found.

"I saw my head laughing
Rolling on the the ground, and now
I'm set free
I'm set free
I'm set free to find a new illusion"

The "left/right footwear floating differently" theory is totally wtf! And it's a professor of oceanography behind it, not some random loony. Maybe he should've been bothered to explain the specific physical processes behind such phenonmenon.

What gets me is, how can someone be an expert in floating objects?

Maybe he can't be bothered because he knows this article is being read by the sort of people who think "ooh, right feet float upstream and left feet downstream, isn't that strange?" rather than "oh shit it looks like we could have a serious psycho on our hands here".

You have to admit that Ashton Kutcher's devotion to "Punk'd" is pretty amazing.

And now they've got a left foot...

This might take a long time," Brooks said. "This is not CSI."

http://www.boston.com/news/world/canada/articles/2008/06/17/5th_human_foot_washes_up_on_canada_coast/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Latest+news]

Gross.

Does the foot match any of the others? I hate that, when you're at an end of season sale at a shoe shop, rummaging around in the pile of cut price clogs'n'shit, and you can't find a matching pair.

Delta Police Const. Sharlene Brooks said officials are working with the B.C. Coroner's office to see if this foot is linked to any other partial remains recovered in the province.

I find the precise wording of this amusing on quite a few levels.

No joking, this is actually a street in Vancouver:
http://bp2.blogger.com/_bGpsbm6qylw/R-wmKC9E-SI/AAAAAAAABsQ/SNdOo6gBbUc/s400/IMG_3905.jpg

Apparently the fourth foot was a woman's.

Or rather, the fourth shoe was a woman's. Dunno about the foot.

i am missing my right foot

made me think of something i saw on pbs some time ago: "There are as many as 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in each square mile of ocean, threatening the health of our seas, especially the marine wildlife inhabiting them. But there is at least one good thing scientists can get from all this junk: a better understanding of the behavior of complicated ocean currents, which are shaped by a number of disparate forces and affect, among other things, the climate and the distribution of Earth's life forms. By studying the movement of ocean flotsam—in particular, the movement of 29,000 bathtub toys that were lost from a cargo ship in 1992—retired oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer has uncovered quite a bit about our ocean's currents and the places they carry litter."

happily pootle

this theory seems sensible:
“I’m beginning to think it might be a boat or plane that went down, and then something shifted, through seismic activity or a boat, that is making it release all these body parts now,” Ms Anderson said. “The reason only feet have been found is because they are in running shoes and protected.”

First person to post the poster for My Left Foot loses.

pootle pootle pootle

There are people who might have limbs stolen and if they are in a coma or some random medical emergency happens where their chopped of limb gets misplaced then this could be entirely possible. Shit happens

that kind of shit, probably not

maybe if this an svu episode maybe...

this was an*

yuh don't see how "random medical emergency" leads to foot in shoe washed up on beach x6

Now with interactive map! I live near feet #s 4 and 5!

anyone in Sweden missing a foot?

http://cdn.last.fm/coverart/130x130/2932735-1764312124.jpg

Keep on hopping, surely?

i've got two left feet, if it helps anybody.

"bored and mischievous people"

Police arrest and question this man in connection with their enquiries...
http://www.momofreaksout.com/media/2/20070712-photos_jake3_lrg.jpg

"We do not currently suspect a crime has been committed," he added.

I heard Sweden was permissive, but that's pretty shocking.

a break in the case!
One of the five disembodied human feet found over the past year along the shorelines of British Columbia has been matched to a depressed man who went missing a year ago.

I shouldn't laugh but for some reason...

"A family member saw one of the shoes and thought, 'Wait a second,' " Lemaitre said

...bought the lols.

Another foot!

"They appear to be disarticulated, on their own, either by the decomposition process [or] what have you," she said.

Or what have you?

Indeed the idea of them 'disarticulating' "on their own" makes me think they are independently minded.

where's the other thread about this

all those severed feet washing up on vancouver island

a cornucopia of puns

ANOTHER FOOT!

maybe this guy?

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j2574cNyitgU4aTivZEUG2ytBgvQD9BIVE3G0

One of the five disembodied human feet found over the past year along the shorelines of British Columbia has been matched to a depressed man who went missing a year ago.

Actually, all of them turned out to belong to the same man! OMG

centipede man

hobbl

There was a leg found down our way too, but that was a diff thing - they know who it belongs to but havent found the rest of her (the leg had a tatt that IDed it).

Maybe sharks eat people but dont like feet. I mean would you eat feet? Yuck.

french sharks can probably do wonderful things with feet.

French Shark #1: "How is the Foot-au-vin?"
French Shark #2: "Not bad, but it needs a little more garlic."

For some reason I can see that as a Crap Sharks Viz comic.

Authorities are seeking more information about a small human foot that washed ashore in Washington state.

http://progressiveboink.com/mike/img/redsnifit/stack.jpg

what the hell, again?

Tale of the toes: More B.C. feet identified

It was a mystery. Feet washing ashore in British Columbia.

Just feet. Not bodies.

But authorities have been able to identify many of the remains. And now they have identified two feet found Feb. 8 and June 16, 2008, on Valdez and Westham islands. Each foot wore a size 11 Nike running shoes.

The Vancouver Sun reports that the feet have been identified as remains of a 21-year-old Surrey, B.C., resident missing since January 2004.

Seven feet belonging to five individuals were discovered between August 2007 and October 2009. The BC Coroners Service has identified four as belonging to three individuals.

The service is working to identify the remaining three, which originate from one male and one female.

Foul play is not thought to be involved in any of the cases.

All the feet, by the way, wore running shoes.

It WAS a mystery?

Running shoes float, is the interesting detail here I think. I mean, they do, right? I think so.

another one!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/08/30/bc-foot-found-false-creek.html

forces2011/08/31
at 7:08 AM ET

Here's another theory. Maybe these are remains of a boat load of illegal immigrants whose boat did not make it to Vancouver's shores. The smugglers can probably afford expensive sneakers. Smugglers and drug dealers: you don't pay, you don't live.

Evolution of 20th century man: the more who try drugs, the more become addicted, the more addicts, the richer the drug dealers, the more addicts can't pay, the more theft, looting, corpses.

this is really one of the craziest stories

I pretty much buy into the theory spelled out in the comments that these are suicides and the weak ankle joint breaks loose, the shoes allow the foot to float to the surface for discovery. I'm not a doctor, so maybe I'm missing something, but seems a lot more logical than some of the other theories being floated (hah!).

http://downsupremacy.blogspot.com/2005/12/body-politic-by-clive-barker.html

I pretty much buy into the theory spelled out in the comments that these are suicides and the weak ankle joint breaks loose, the shoes allow the foot to float to the surface for discovery. I'm not a doctor, so maybe I'm missing something, but seems a lot more logical than some of the other theories being floated (hah!).

― jon /via/ chi 2.0, Wednesday, August 31, 2011 2:40 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think it's just as likely that it's a serial killer with a bizarre calling card

i guess either a foot becomes detached from the body on any random number of bridge jump suicides all over the world and no one has ever bothered to mention it or feet are only detaching in this instance of suicides which would be very weird

Maybe all currents eventually lead to Canada.

heh

if you want to read a super awesome tale of ocean currents read this imo:

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/01/0081345

is it about severed feet?

I am telling you, there's a group of Canadian medical students laughing their asses off over this

xpost it is about rubber duckies

it does make mention of some 1990 air jordans that drifted for years tho

dude turned that whole article into a book

http://www.amazon.com/Moby-Duck-Beachcombers-Oceanographers-Environmentalists-Including/dp/0670022195

hey thanks for the pr0-tip, que!

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=9198496

the game is A FOOT

Wonder what the oldest link that still works on this board is, semi-surprised that the one from the first post in this thread is still extant. But it is the Guardian and I guess they still keep everything on the website even if it is a bit of a pain to navigate at the best of times.

Links to BBC news never seem to go old. I've definitely clicked some links in here that were more than a decade old, and they always lead to the correct news item on the BBC site.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/2014/05/06/volunteers-find-human-foot-in-sneaker-at-centennial-park/

Why are Nike trainers washing up on beaches?